Heath Davidson on fear, commitment and his remarkable return to tennis

Wheelchair tennis star Heath Davidson, whose profile exploded after he and partner Dylan Alcott claimed quad doubles gold for Australia at the Rio 2016 Paralympics, joins Viv and Matt this week in Pod Laver Arena. Davidson’s prominence in the sport, and wheelchair tennis advocacy, have helped shape the upcoming summer of tennis; January will see wheelchair events integrated into the United Cup and the Brisbane and Adelaide Internationals leading into Australian Open 2026. More motivated than ever to compete during the new-look summer, Davidson remains a fixture in the top 10 at age 38, all the more inspiring given the hurdles he was forced to overcome – including addiction, homelessness and “falling into the wrong crowd” – during his teens and 20s, a time he recounts in candid detail during this wide-ranging interview.

Listen to the full episode here.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
When I got clean and stopped using, I sort of
had made a commitment to myself than anything that I do,
I'm going to do properly and jump in full, which
in the past had sort of never been the case.
I dropped out of high school, so I'd never finished school.
I had had a couple of jobs here or there,

(00:24):
but never went for a day and then didn't go
back and sort of stuff like that. So that commitment
to myself that if I'm going to do something, I
want to see it through. And tennis was a funny
one to come back because there was so much fear
about coming back because I was quite a successful junior,
like I represented Australia twice for World Team Cup. I'd

(00:46):
never lost a Dylan, I was world number three in
the juniors. So I had a really good junior career
and obviously just life got in the way and I
chose a different path there for a while, and the
fear of coming back and not being as good as
I was was really, really heavily weighing on me. But

(01:08):
I just said, you know what, this is what I
want to do, so I'm going to do it, and
I jumped in and I think I was hitting just
I rang my local coach. Actually, one night I watched
Nick Kurios beat Rafa I think it was twenty fifteen
at Wimbledon, and my girlfriend at the time said, you
used to play wheelchair tennis, didn't you? And I said
I did, and she's like, if you ever thought about

(01:30):
going back. I'd been cleaned for a few years by then,
and I sort of went, no, not really, and then
that sort of just it was in the back of
my head. Yep, the seed had been yeah, and I'm like, oh,
I wonder if I wonder if I should. And then
a couple of days later, I rang my coach, Marco Percy,
that i'd hit with from fourteen to eighteen, and he

(01:51):
used to come and look after me and come and
check on me when I live by myself. He's like
my big brother these days. I rang him and he's like,
this is a blasphem passing thing something from you again,
And I said, any chance I could come down and
have a bash and he's like, I'll say the same
thing as I did back when your dad rang me.
Do you want to go and have a bash? I

(02:11):
said yes, So I rang. I didn't have a wheelchair
or anything. So I rang wheel chair, spat Tiktoria, borrowed
a wheelchair, went down, had to hit. It was fun.
I forgot how much I missed just hitting tennis balls.
And then I think I posted I think I was

(02:32):
hitting for three or four weeks and then I posted
a photo of me back on a tennis court and
Dylan had seen that post and then had a chat
with Tennis Australia and said, hey, he's used to play tennis.
He used to be pretty good. Let's get him down
and just have a chat to him, see what's going on.

(02:56):
And I came in, had a hit with Dylan. I
was terrible. He was world number one at the time,
so he pasted me. I met Francois and Brenda, who
used to be in charge of our department, and yeah,
that conversation led to would you like to come in
and we'll have a chat and see if we can
move forward, And then yeah, I went from hitting once

(03:20):
or twice a week to being here five days a
week with Dylan, not having any idea what it meant
to be a professional athlete. I mean, at the time
I was still in junkford four days a week and
doing all the wrong things, and yeah, really really struggled
to adapt to that lifestyle. But huge thanks to Dylan

(03:42):
for being there every step of the way with me
and helping me and pushing me. And he's a really
good motivated that boy. He just he knows the right
things to stay to get me to go. And I
mean it was a well win twelve months because twelve
months later we want to gold medal at the Paralympics.
So yeah, it was pretty pretty wild. We will talk

(04:02):
more about Rio shortly, but also you won your first
singles title international singles title in Korea in May twenty seventeen.
What did that mean for you at the time. It
was mean a lot because obviously all of my success
leading up to that had been in the doubles, and
it was I mean, my first top ten win was

(04:25):
a few months before. That would have been late twenty sixteen,
and then yeah, I managed to win Korea and played
some good tennis. And I think I've always enjoyed playing
doubles more because I enjoy the like partnership. And I
think I've always been a very negative singles player in

(04:46):
the sense of like I get in my own head
and I'm really negative to myself and I mean I've
been working with a sports like now for six years
and it's still there, but we're starting to get better.
So yeah, mean a lot to actually finally get out
there and get one by myself. I liked being in
ding Shadow, that was nice. If you'd like to hear
the rest of our conversation with Heath Davidson, make sure

(05:09):
you're head to the sit down wherever you're listening to this,
or you can find the links in the show notes.